FBI wants AI surveillance drones with facial recognition technology
Donald Trump and the Deep State he claims to be dismantling is about to turbocharge the surveillance state by equipping the FBI with AI surveillance drones with facial recognition and other spying technology. The FBI put out the call to potential vendors of AI and machine learning technology to be used in unmanned aerial systems in a so-called “request for information,” where government agencies request companies submit initial information for a forthcoming contract opportunity.
The FBI is in search of technology that could enable drones to conduct facial recognition, license plate recognition, and detection of weapons, among other uses, according to the document . . . Constitution be damned (via The Intercept):
The pitch from the FBI immediately raised concerns among civil libertarians, who warned that enabling FBI drones with artificial intelligence could exacerbate the chilling effect of surveillance of activities protected by the First Amendment.
“By their very nature, these technologies are not built to spy on a specific person who is under criminal investigation,” said Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They are built to do indiscriminate mass surveillance of all people, leaving people that are politically involved and marginalized even more vulnerable to state harassment.”
The use of drones to surveil protesters and others taking part in activities ostensibly protected under the Constitution frequently raises concerns.
“Technically speaking, police are not supposed to conduct surveillance of people based solely on their legal political activities, including attending protests,” Guariglia said, “but as we have seen, police and the federal government have always been willing to ignore that.”
“One of our biggest fears in the emergence of this technology has been that police will be able to fly a face recognition drone over a protest and in a few passes have a list of everyone who attended. It’s essentially technology tailor-made for political retribution and harassment,” he said. (Emphasis mine)
What we are approaching is the point of no return. While the scientific community has a lot to say about the world-altering impact of artificial intelligence on every aspect of our lives, little has been said about its growing role in government and its oppressive effect on our freedoms, especially “the core democratic principles of privacy, autonomy, equality, the political process, and the rule of law.”
Donald Trump has made no secret of his plans to make AI a priority; he signed the first-ever Executive Order on AI in 2019 and he issued an executive order giving the technology sector a green light to develop and deploy AI in his second term containing no guardrails to limit the risks it poses to U.S. national security, the economy, public health, safety or liberty.
For the record, Biden was no better. His executive order — Trump 2.0 repealed it — merely instructed the tech sector to share the results of AI safety tests with the U.S. government.
Using the same pattern that we saw with the rollout of drones, government has been quick to mix AI technology with them. And just as it was with the drone rollout, Big Brother shows little interest in ensuring that the rights of the American people are protected. Indeed, we are altogether lacking any guardrails for transparency, accountability, and adherence to the rule of law when it comes to the government’s use of AI-enabled drones.
Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”
How do we protect our privacy against the growing menace of overreach and abuse by a technological sector working with the government? In reality, the ability to do so may already be out of our hands.
According to an investigative report by The Washington Post, law enforcement agencies across the nation are already using “artificial intelligence tools in ways they were never intended to be used as a shortcut to find and arrest suspects without other evidence.” In one particular case, police used AI-powered facial recognition technology to arrest and jail a 29-year-old man for brutally assaulting a security guard. It would take Christopher Gatlin two years to clear his name.
“How do I beat a machine?” asked one man who was wrongly arrested by police for assaulting a bus driver based on an incorrect AI match. Good question, because it’s becoming all but impossible to beat government’s AI machine, particularly when you add it to an army of drones with facial recognition capabilities. In the end, the FBI and other agents of the police state will have absolute liberty-killing power.
The surveillance state, combined with AI, is already well on its way to creating a world where’s there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. FBI drones equipped with facial recognition technology are just another piece of the puzzle. Thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s sprawling spy network of fusion centers, we are all just sitting ducks.
Before long, every American will be subject to being flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. And if the FBI succeeds in obtaining AI-powered drones with facial recognition technology, it will only be a matter of time before we find ourselves wrongly accused, investigated, and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
Every AI-powered surveillance technology adopted and deployed by the government tears away at the First Amendment’s right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly along with the Fourth Amendment’s right to due process.
The ramifications of the FBI — or any government agency for that matter — wielding unlimited, unregulated, and unaccountable power to track Americans using AI-powered drones with facial recognition technology couldn’t be more consequential: an America where tyrants, authoritarians, and dictator wannabes possess the ultimate means of repression and control.
Donald Trump and his FBI want to use AI-powered drones with facial recognition technology against every, single American, so the time to act is now before the lines between citizen and subject, between freedom and control, between liberty and tyranny become irrevocably blurred.
The future of freedom for ourselves and our posterity depends on it.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily radio feature: iTunes | Pandora | Tune In | iHeart | RSS
For media inquiries or to have David speak to your group, use the Contact Us form.
